1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage devices and, more specifically, to a storage device that carries a general-purpose chassis including a plurality of hard disk drives provided thereinto from both surface sides thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system handling a large amount of data like a big data center or others performs data management using a host computer and a storage device. The storage device carries therein a plurality of hard disk drives arranged in an array, and manages these hard disk drives by RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), thereby protecting data.
In relation to the increasing amount of data for handling, the number of hard disk drives for mounting in the storage device is also increasing. As an example, Patent Document 1 (JP-A-2008-47249) describes a storage device in which a plurality of hard disk drives are mounted in a chassis provided specifically therefor.
With the storage device of such a type, the hard disk drives are cooled during a process of flowing air provided from the outside into the chassis over an air-flow path formed inside of the chassis, and the air is exhausted from a fan unit disposed on the upper surface of the chassis.
Patent Document 2 (JP-A-2007-11931) also describes a storage device of a type including a general-purpose rack as an alternative to a specifically-provided chassis, and to the rack, a user sequentially adds a module mounted with a hard disk drive.
The problem with such a storage device utilizing the general-purpose chassis is that a fan for air exhaustion use cannot be disposed on the upper surface of the rack, and the rack cannot be formed therein with an air-flow path. The storage device is thus so configured that a hard disk drive is combined with a power supply and a fan, and the resulting module is accommodated in the rack.
The module is provided into the rack in such a manner that the hard disk drive is facing the front of the rack. The air is sucked from the front of the module into the rack, and is exhausted from the rear of the module.